Is Ibrahim Traore Another Strong Man or a Watershed Moment in African Politics?
Written by Gregoire Welbes, MSc Political Science (Global Politics). The September 2022 coup in Burkina Faso marked yet another data point in sub-Saharan Africa's troubling pattern of democratic erosion. While we witnessed a wave of democratization at the end of the last century, democratic backsliding has been a defining feature of 21st-century sub-Saharan Africa , with big man politics returning to, or rather, persevering at, the forefront. When a dissatisfied military junta seized power...